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Cycling World Cup 20

From 1989 until 2004 a cycling competition was disputed or, rather, a trophy was awarded known as World Cup. In this trophy points were distributed in 1 day most important races of the year. Giving the award to the best classics rider at the end of the year. Sean Kelly won the first edition and Paolo Bettini the 3 latter, being also the most successful. Maurizio Fondriest, Johan Museeuw and Michele Bartoli were after him with 2 triumphs.

This competition earned status and appealing. The classification best positioned rider in every moment of the season could wear a distinctive maillot and the best riders of the moment challenged it. It helped to improve participation in some races, while forced best cyclists to compete some races not suited for them, just for the joy of the spectators.

With the foundation of disastrous Pro Tour, when the UCI tried to transform cycling in some kind of F1, this trophy disappeared. Some races of World Cup went to get lost inside Pro Tour rankings and the others in Continental Circuits. There was no award for the best rider in 1 day races never more.

This is the reason I decided, years ago, to keep calculating World Cup classification. But some races disappeared and was not easy to use the old World Cup rules to calculate the rankings. So I needed to make some changes, Subjective changes. So I decided to start over with my own World Cup, with clear and easy rules.

I named it World Cup 20. Because it would be composed always by 20 races. Basically the same every year, only with few modifications due to cancellation and disappearance of races. In every race only the best 10 would earn points and there would be not a minimum of races to compete to be able to be ranked. The latter rule made sense when the trophy was official, now was meaningless.

Finally I divided races in three categories with a different scale of points. Obviously not all races are equally appraised. Something the ranking should be able to translate. And World Cup did not.

The big monuments of cycling would be class 1 and the most rewarded ones.

Milano San Remo

Ronde van Vlaanderen (Tour of Flanders)

Paris – Roubaix

Liège – Bastogne – Liège

Giro di Lombardia

Which would distribute the following points:

1º- 100 points.

2º- 70 points.

3º- 55 points.

4º- 40 points.

5º- 30 points.

6º – 20 points.

7º – 15 points.

8º – 10 points.

9º – 6 points.

10º – 4 points.

Afterwards there would come the second class with another 5 races. That ones with long tradition, the most relevant after monuments and they conformed this second class always. Also the typology of the races is the same as that of monuments. 2 cobblestone, 2 hilly and other Milano San Remo alike, giving chances to sprinters.

E3 Harelbeke

Gent -Wevelgem

Flèche Wallonne

Amstel Gold Race

Paris – Tours

Which would distribute the following points:

1º- 80 points.

2º- 55 points.

3º- 42 points.

4º- 30 points.

5º- 22 points.

6º – 16 points.

7º – 12 points.

8º – 8 points.

9º – 4 points.

10º – 2 points.

Finally there would be another 10 races, mixture of the most important today and those with more tradition and history. The selection is subjective and I tried to maintain always the same races, making modifications only because a race was not raced anymore. Of course changes were always made at the beginning of the season, never afterwards.